


a kingdom where nobody dies

by ilgaksu



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, MAJOR SPOILERS CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED, Movie 1: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Spoilers, Period Typical Attitudes, References to Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 04:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8954446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: Neil is seventeen years old and he looks up, gasping and on the ground. Andrew Minyard stands there, the scars crisscrossing his knuckles, his grasp loose on the baseball bat. Neil’s stomach feels set alight.  “Consider that an early warning,” Andrew says. “Who let a No-Maj into Eden,” Neil manages, and Minyard raises his eyebrows and says, “It’s not your promised land anymore, pure-blood.  Wesninski."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antilse](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=antilse).



Two steps forward, three steps back: Neil feels the grit of the bricks under his palms, the faint hum of the magic like a sleeping heart, stirring as it wakes to his skin. He whispers to it - old habits die hard, and whispering is one of them - and it unfolds under his hands like a puzzle box, rippling outwards and reforming into the corridor of Eden’s Twilight. Roland looks up from polishing glasses when he heads in and nods briefly, before his eyes resettle just to Neil’s right, lingering on his shadow, the heat of Andrew where he stands behind Neil. Watching his back.

“Welcome back,” Roland says. “We haven’t seen your face here for - what’ll you have, Andrew?”

Andrew shrugs. His hands are in his pockets like he’s harmless, but there must be half the silver in this place sewn into his sleeves, knives glittering like the speakeasy lights. No wand looks much less defenceless when it’s on a man like Andrew Minyard, who should’ve never even have survived long enough to hold one in his bare hands anyway. _You were amazing,_ Neil told him three years ago, before Baltimore, before fire and metal and Cruciatus in his bones too deep to heal the ruptures in his face. Wounds of the flesh; wounds of the living; his mother bleeding out in the driver’s seat of a Model T Ford and all the magic in a young Neil’s blood couldn’t put hers back. It’s all the same. It’s all the goddamn same. So he said _you were amazing,_ which meant _you’re a miracle, Andrew Minyard,_ which meant _I’m not afraid of you, Andrew Minyard,_ which meant _I would’ve lived for you, Andrew Minyard._

Not many men would sleep easy next to an obscurial, but Neil is not those men.

*

Neil is seventeen years old and he looks up, gasping and on the ground. Andrew Minyard stands there, the scars crisscrossing his knuckles, his grasp loose on the baseball bat. Neil’s stomach feels set alight.

“Consider that an early warning,” Andrew says.  

“Who let a No-Maj into Eden,” Neil manages, and Minyard raises his eyebrows and says, “It’s not your promised land anymore, pure-blood. _Wesninski._ ”

Unwillingly, Neil feels his breath hitch. The fear is so old he can’t help it. The body remembers. His wand, outflung too slow in defence and already broken before he crossed the state line, splinters under Andrew’s foot, a faint crack under the makeshift wrapping and Scotch tape. Andrew looks down at it, and Neil swears he almost reads surprised before Andrew blinks and something shutters with the movement.

“Your daddy know you’re here?”

The body remembers. Neil is paralysed by it, no hex needed. Andrew kneels down beside him and runs a solitary knuckle across his cheek, up to his eye.

“Daddy never taught you not to buy Polyjuice off the corner, did he,” Andrew croons, then glances at Neil’s face. “No, you knew better. Dead men’s hair doesn’t hold in Polyjuice. Doesn’t bind right. You know why you still bought it? You’re desperate.”  

He smiles, wide and loud. Neil spits blood at his feet.

“If you’re gonna kill me,” he says, “Get it the fuck over with.”

“Didn’t you know, Wesninski?” Andrew asks. “Good things come to those who wait.”

*

Back in South Carolina and the house in Columbia for the first time in six months, and Aaron goes to speak first. Old habits die hard. Neil cuts across him. He never likes giving Aaron the satisfaction of anything if he can help it. It’s not personal. It’s just how Neil, a self-made man, is built. We are all made in our father’s image but Nathaniel Wesninski broke the mould and turned his back. We are all made in someone’s image but this isn’t a decade for gods. It’s not personal, but for the fact Neil goes to bed with Aaron’s brother and they both know it; it’s not personal, but for the fact they are both their mother’s sons; it’s not personal but for how it is, both of them men too easy at getting under the other’s skin, but Aaron’s an amateur and Neil honed his skills on his own broken bone.

“How is he,” Neil asks, and Aaron leans back, his doctor’s bag limp like a gutted stomach at his side, and says, “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“I’m not your brother’s keeper,” Neil says through gritted teeth. Aaron smiles, and there’s the shadow of it, in the darkness behind his teeth: this is a boy who shared breathing space with Andrew Minyard for nine fucking months. This is a boy with the same bad blood.  

“Neither am I,” Aaron replies.  

“If you’re not going to help him,” Neil hisses, “You can just fucking leave,” and gets out of his chair. Aaron snaps out a hand and grabs his wrist. Neil knows what it is to know a beating is coming. It’s the only reason he doesn’t kick Aaron to the floor. He settles for wrenching Aaron’s hand back until Aaron lets go with a grunt.

“Touch me again,” Neil tells him, “Try it.”

Aaron doesn’t try it. He sighs and says, “Do you want me to say something hopeful?”

“I want you not to lie to me like you’re trying to lie to him,” Neil says. He doesn’t say: we both know Andrew knows what’s happening. We both know Andrew knows the cost. Aaron sighs again. For a moment, Neil sees how Aaron must be on better days with better patients, ones that have never thrown him out of a window or killed his mother. For a moment, Neil sees how tired Aaron Minyard is. He’s not the only one carrying a dead man walking.

“The suppressants,” Aaron says quietly, “they kept the worst of it under.”

“It was drowning him,” Neil retorts. In his memory, Andrew is laughing, and it’s the worst sound he’s ever heard. It sounds like something being razed to the ground.

“I can’t swim,” Andrew says. They both turn to the door; Andrew stands there, barefoot, in shirtsleeves and braces. His eyes flash when the light hits them. There’s a moment of silence and Aaron’s barely-smothered wince. Andrew looks at Neil. Neil, unrepentant, looks back. Guilt is for other people. Neil won’t apologise for caring about Andrew, not even to Andrew himself.

“Sorry,” Andrew says, mocking. “Was I interrupting you both?”  

“There’s never been a case like Andrew. He shouldn’t be this powerful. He shouldn’t even be alive.”

“Neither should you,” Neil shoots back. They’re both Tilda’s children. They both have a No-Maj for a mother. Aaron’s no better. Aaron’s no -

“You’re right, Neil,” Andrew says, crossing the room and leaning against the side table, eyes trained unerringly on Aaron. He folds his arms. “I’m really not missing anything from these.” He raises his eyebrows at Aaron. “Go on. What’s the death sentence, doctor?”

With his weight braced like it is against the table, with his hands curled close to his sides, you can barely see the tremor. Neil can see it, but that’s because he’s made a study of Andrew’s moods. Fear’s like that. The body remembers.

“You won’t see thirty-five,” Aaron says, the ricochet of the syllables fast like gunshot. “Not unless we find something.”

It’s not a killing wound. Andrew takes it standing. He blinks and turns to Neil.

“Ten years,” he says. For Neil, who thought he was dead at seventeen, and for Andrew, who hadn’t cared either way, it’s an inheritance they never expected. Ten years to live. Ten years, and maybe more. For all Aaron's sneers, he's looking for something. For all Aaron's flaws, he's persistent. So, at least ten years with Andrew. That’s it, what Andrew’s offering, a whole next decade of his shadow at Neil’s back, of his face in sleep and his insults at Neil’s throat and a constant, growing familiarity. _I would’ve lived for you, Andrew Minyard._ Neil feels it wash through him. He sees something under Andrew’s armour waver, and replies before it cracks through.

“Yes,” Neil says.

“Well, it’s always a pleasure,” Andrew says, scorn in his voice, pushing away from the side table and sauntering towards the door without looking back. Neil’s eyes are drawn to the line of his shoulders. The electric light brightens the blonde of his hair to almost translucence. “Don’t die first, Aaron.”

The door bangs shut before Aaron can reply. Neil raps his fingers against the tabletop once, twice, before standing up.

“It’s getting late,” Neil says. “Katelyn’ll be watching for you.”

Aaron’s eyes flash in an eerie mimicry of his brother’s. It makes Neil think of Oscar Wilde. And yet each man kills the thing he loves; it’s just that Andrew chose Neil Josten and Aaron settled for the havoc of loving a No-Maj doctor, sneaking out to her behind MACUSA’s roving eye. Neil wonders if Aaron wonders about his father, what kind of man he was, whether he played the game like Aaron’s playing it. If that means he knows how easy it is to lose. Aaron Minyard may not be a nice man, but he’s not a stupid one.

“Do you still share a bed?” Aaron asks, and Neil’s jaw tightens. He reassesses his previous conclusion.

“I didn’t realise you took such an interest in my sleeping arrangements, Aaron,” Neil retorts, voice silk-slick and taut with it. Predictably, Aaron seems lost for a reply.

“You should be more careful,” he finally manages. For an instant, they’re eighteen and twenty again, Aaron saying _bewitched_ and _my brother_ and _you;_ Aaron on the floor, writhing as a binding hex settles; Aaron knocked down and looking satisfied somehow, watching Neil swallow around more curses, the kind so powerful and so permanent they hurt where he stills them in his throat.

Neil is older now. He goes with his second thought some days. He knows, in his own way, Aaron is trying to do the same thing as he is. He knows, in his own way, Aaron’s trying to keep Andrew alive.

“You should be with what you’re saying,” Neil replies, icy. “Drive safely, now,” and leaves before Aaron can formulate a response.

*

The deal is this: Andrew is twenty when he puts Neil under his mouth like putting him under a knife but good; Neil is eighteen and shivers under Andrew's shaking hands. Andrew thinks because he's holding the weapon it'll only be Neil that's cut open by it, only Neil gutted and gasping with his eyelashes and his bared throat and the magic beating under both of their skins turning him luminous.

Of course, given personal history, Andrew should know better. Andrew should know better: say it slower and it sounds like a eulogy.

The deal is this: Andrew is afraid of flying, afraid of Apparating, afraid of being afraid of being afraid to lose something. There are no Resurrection Stones this century. Neil disappears in the middle of a crowd, so Andrew, half a No-Maj, half a devil's son, a full-grown curse of Salem, feels his own seams creak. Neil disappears in the afternoon, so Andrew stands in the light of the window and puts his hands on Kevin Day's neck. He never even sees it coming. Purebloods are always looking for the next hex. They forget humans have been killing each other for much longer and much more creatively than Avada Kedavra allows. Andrew lives in a place called Eden. He knows the drill. In his memory, Neil swallows under his touch; in the light of the window, Kevin chokes.   
  
"Andrew," he hears in chorus, and he knows the worst of his obscurial must be bleeding out. He knows it because he can taste the blood rising under Kevin's skin, the rising death in Kevin's mouth and because he can see the way his own hands slowly are turning to smoke. Andrew takes his hands off Kevin's throat. He drops. It's almost funny, how his chest rattles, close enough that Andrew can rasp through the smoke in his own chest without letting it burn him through.   
  
"I'll take that as a down payment," Andrew says. "If he's dead, I'm coming for the rest of your debt."

*

Andrew is already settled in an armchair in their room by the time Neil’s taken his leave of Aaron and headed up after him, light-footed except on these particular stairs: the ones that always creak, the ones that could be fixed with a simple charm, the ones that warn Andrew when someone is coming. Neil undresses for bed quietly. It’s nearly midnight. The witching hour. Neil smiles to himself: a private joke with himself, his dead mother, and a ghost called Nathaniel Wesninski. The last one left alive of that strange and unholy trinity, he tugs out his cufflinks with his teeth and sets them on the bedside table. The buttons of his waistcoat are minute and slippery under his touch; syntax in a foreign tongue, catching on his fingernails, an itch as a bruise rising under the skin. When he goes for his belt, Andrew turns the page of the book he’s holding and the sound is crisp like affirmation. Andrew pretends not to be watching Neil over the new page. Neil smiles at him, slow and open. Andrew still doesn’t move, his shoulders set like concrete.

“Are you gonna stay in that chair all night?” Neil drawls. Andrew’s eyes flash with anger. Andrew has slept in the chair before, and he’ll do it again. Neil lets himself have a moment to hate Aaron Minyard, to hate MACUSA, to hate every person that made Andrew afraid of himself and what he could do, a boy with nightmares, next to Neil in their bed. He only lets himself do this in portions now: he swallows it in small bites, else it’ll eat him alive instead. So he hates, and then he changes tactics.

“Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Andrew says immediately, and watches Neil walk towards him, the fire at his back. He manages an unimpressed, “What are you trying to achieve here, Neil,” when Neil slides naked into his lap, though his hands move to Neil’s waist, steadying him, and he lets out a quiet hiss of breath when Neil settles in close.  

“I’ll say it as many times as I have to, Andrew,” Neil says. He leans down and presses his face against Andrew’s hair, pulls back to kiss his temple. Andrew shifts but says nothing. “I’ll say it as many times as I need.”

“I don’t need anything from you,” Andrew bites out.  

“That’s fine, baby,” Neil replies, half-mocking on the endearment. Andrew shifts again. “Don’t need me all you want. I’m still not walking. Not out on you. Not ever.”

Andrew lets out a breath. His shoulders move with it. His hands have slid, almost without volition, to the small of Neil’s back. Almost without volition, except for how Andrew never does anything unintentionally.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Andrew mutters, dragging one hand up Neil’s back and curling his fingers into Neil’s hair. Neil smiles in the scant space left between. When he speaks, his mouth brushes against Andrew’s.    

“I don’t make promises,” he tells him. “We have a deal.”

*

It’s nine-thirty-four and a week later when they arrive at MACUSA headquarters. The gloss of the gold and black loses its allure when you’re here every three months for what they’re here for. In the early morning, Andrew’s eyes had been bleak as his suit. Neil had watched him from the corners of his own eyes in their hotel room until Andrew raised his eyebrows, sealing himself into his armour with the faint sound of metal cufflinks.

“Are you going to say you’re fine?” Neil asked, and Andrew settled instead for scowling. He rested his gaze on where Neil had pointedly pushed their beds together the night before.

“You should fix that,” he said, the curl of his lip a hook for the eye, a distraction from the faint tremors in his shoulders that would begin in the elevator and increase as they descended to the street, as they began the walk uptown. “Don’t make me clear up after you.”

“Andrew,” Neil says now, as they stop on the final steps, and Andrew turns, his frown drawing people away from the increasing empty of his eyes. “Andrew. This is the last time.”

“I know, Neil,” Andrew snarls, and ducks into the foyer before Neil can open his mouth again. They’re awaited by a team of Aurors in long dark coats. Neil burnt his own version, too similar to stay likeable, after their second visit. He can still smell the burning leather, can hear Andrew’s annoyed voice saying, “You’re with me, Neil. It’s 1922. Your father is dead. It’s 1922 and I killed him,” whilst Neil gasped his way through half a memory of his mother’s body alight and Andrew gripped the back of his neck.

“Welcome to New York, Mr. Minyard,” Browning says now, eyes skipping over him politely when Andrew doesn’t reply. “Mr. Josten. Did you have a pleasant journey?”

It’s 1927. Neil Josten is twenty three years old. His father is dead and Andrew Minyard killed him. Neil breathes the reassurance of it in.

“We took the train,” Neil replies, and ignores Browning’s surprise. Andrew’s fear of flying may be known, but his fear of Apparating isn’t. Neil’s mother had him learning to shield his mind from prying spells at six years old, back when he was a boy called Nathaniel Wesninski, when Abram was his last and only truth. Neil Josten is the last unbroken vault of Andrew’s secrets, and Neil Josten will die intact. When the group of Aurors turn and begin to make their way to the elevator, Andrew takes in a quick breath, steeling. Neil says, “Don’t you have stairs in here yet?” He drawls it as long and obnoxious as he can. Browning sighs. They get in the elevator.

“How has he been?” Browning asks Neil, as they rattle through to the right level. Next to him, Andrew breathes slow and even.

“He can talk too, you know,” Neil replies. “If you ask nicely.”

Browning sighs again. Andrew doesn’t say a word, eyes forward and blank.

“You don’t change, Josten,” he mutters, as the attending elf yanks the grille of the elevator door back with an almighty clang. Neil suppresses a flinch at the noise. Andrew moves incrementally closer to Neil’s side. Their shoulders brush; black cloth against dark green and grey. Monochrome boys. Snake boys. Boys with smiles like open snares.

“I heard real people try to be consistent,” Neil replies, “And I’m sure trying to be a real person here.”

Browning huffs out a laugh. It catches in Neil’s chest, syncopated up to Andrew’s careful breathing in his ear and the low boil of hatred in his own lungs, like pneumonia or drowning, like coughing in the night that won’t ever stop, blood in his mother’s mouth in the front seat of a car. _Andrew, this is the last time. I know, Neil._

“Step this way, Mr. Minyard,” one of the other Aurors says. She’s barely older than them, with her hair bobbed like Allison’s, with sharp bones like Renee. The familiarity doesn’t reassure Neil. Bones mean nothing. Bones mean ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and nothing greater. Andrew moves away from Neil’s side and follows her silently, almost boredly but for the set of his body, a boy too young to go in the last Great War but who knows the firing squad all the same. _Hold the line._ Neil watches him go.

“You know, kid,” Browning says, and Neil bristles at that last part. “You don’t have to watch for all this.”

“Yes, I do,” Neil snaps. He doesn’t say _I don’t trust you not to give him back_ , but they both hear it. Browning smiles, thin and humourless, and opens the door. Neil walks in after him and immediately turns to the glass panel that takes up the whole of the right wall. He braces his weight and settles in to stand.

“Sorry, sir, you’re in the way,” another Auror tries to say.

“Figure something out,” Neil tells him, and doesn’t move.

“You’re trying to work with us here, Josten.” Browning sounds weary. Neil can already hear the whispering at the back of the viewing room, radiating out and reverberating through the building. There’s not many people left alive who know Neil’s old name, but strangers sure notice the scars. The young man with the burnt hands, devoted to the only adult obscurial documented here in America. That’s the word he’s heard them use: _devoted._ He thinks it suits. He thinks it’s mutual.  

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Neil retorts, and Browning wisely drops it.

A few minutes later, Andrew walks into the room on the other side of the glass. He can’t see Neil, of course; it’s silvered on his side, a one-way ticket, but his eyes snap to where Neil is anyway, exact and unerring. Once in their game, Neil asked how he knew: truth for a truth. Andrew looked at him, blinking slowly, a little drowsy, and said _I know it’s you. It - we - know it’s you. I don’t know how._ He meant _don’t ask me how,_ but Neil heard it anyway in each bruising kiss. Andrew sits down on a chair, alone in the room. The door, naturally, had automatically locked behind him. His shirt seems very white under the lights. To Neil’s left, he hears Browning lean forward and press the intercom.

“Are you ready?” he asks Andrew. Andrew looks steadily at Neil. Neil doesn’t look away from him either. Browning once tried to cite the law - cite in an attempt to incite, something about a sanatorium for confused predilections - but his threats fell empty when he cottoned on. _I’m not your brother’s keeper,_ Neil told Aaron, but Neil’s the only one who’s survived Andrew’s obscurial. Neil’s the only one who’s lived with Andrew like this.

“Go on then,” Andrew says finally. He sounds unimpressed as ever. “We both have other places to be.”

It’s mocking. Browning’s mouth tightens with it. He nods once, sharp, and they start the testing.

*

"Cash or check?" Neil says at nineteen, blue-eyed in a magical speakeasy in South Carolina. His breath is hot behind his own teeth, glittering like something banked and waiting in still water. Andrew downs his third Firewhiskey and says, "Bank's closed."

  
He doesn't move his arm from around Neil's shoulders. Neil shrugs and leans back. He pours Andrew another Firewhiskey and smiles when he catches Andrew watching his hands, smiles more when Andrew's own hand snaps out to hold Neil's wrist in place until he's poured enough.

  
"Don't," Andrew mutters. "You're getting bad ideas. I can smell it, Neil."

"So I can't take a turn?" Neil retorts, his grin turned so searing now he feels like he's burning with it, with the leaden weight of Andrew's eyes, with a feeling like he's downed the whole bottle himself though he hasn't touched it.

"That's not," Andrew replies, "What I said."

This turn, Neil's question is easy: how old were you when you felt it compared to how old you were when you realised?

"That's two turns."

"Not with how I phrased it."

"Your grammar is subpar at best," Andrew snipes, and there's such a long silence that Neil almost takes it back, before Andrew sighs.

"Four and thirteen," he says, and before Neil can accept the enormity of that, Andrew shoves his glass back along the bar.

It rattles off the copper rail at the edge and crashes to the floor. Somehow, it doesn't shatter. Neil once caught Nicky placing protection charms on all the glassware, red-eyed after a late night telephone call with Erik and fight with Aaron in fast succession. Inanimate objects, after all, are easier to take care of.

"Don't think you're not cleaning that up," Aaron says, frowning, passing on his way through the bar floor, jacket in hand.

"Enjoy the service, Aaron," Neil snaps back, stopping barely short of baring his teeth.

Aaron's been going to church with Katelyn and her parents three weeks running. Neil perversely keeps hoping for a sermon on witchcraft. He can't think of a better accompaniment to Aaron's inevitable hangover than a diatribe against him, moreso given he'll have to sit there and take it. Matt and Dan once called Neil petty. He prefers to think of it as acknowledging daily victories. Andrew watches Aaron leave, and then turns back to Neil.

“I’m taking a turn,” he says quietly. Neil nods.

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“You once said you’d take Cruciatus over Obliviate.” Andrew’s stare is wrenching. “Why?”

His gaze is a stone dropping into a deep well: his gaze causes a drop in Neil’s stomach. Suddenly, Neil is seven is ten is thirteen, an unlucky number for an unlucky boy; suddenly Neil is in the backseat of another stolen car, in the backroom of a paper-thin motel, his mother’s voice hushed on the spell and the reflection of its light in her eyes.   

Neil doesn’t know what she made him forget, only that she made him forget, over and over and over. Neil doesn’t know what she made him forget, only that she thought it was better he didn’t know. Only that Neil’s left now that she’s dead with blank spots in his memory like scratches on a familiar record; the sort that skip on the gramophone and leave you with static in between the song. The kind that leave you with silence and the unsettling ache of something missing.

“Pick something else.” His voice comes out hoarse. Andrew knows what it means, to have people tell you to take the forgetting; to take the Pensieve, to take self-Obliviation, to take taking something out and calling it the be-all, end-all curative.

“No,” Andrew replies, tilting his head to one side, watching Neil with ravenous eyes. “No, I don’t think I will, Neil.”

So Neil answers. That’s the rules of the game.

*

Nathaniel is eighteen when he ends up in that godforsaken Baltimore basement, tucked between the wrecks of old liquor stills. He wonders if his father’ll drown him in the old bathtub and laughs through it like he’s six glasses into Gigglewater before Lola cracks her hand over his face, the princess-cut claret of her rings tearing the cuts on his face ever more open. Nathaniel is eighteen to  Andrew Minyard’s twenty when Andrew’s dragged in like a dog caught sniffing around the wrong backyard, and Nathan Wesninski must see the panicked light of something in his only son’s eyes. Somebody had come looking for him, but life isn’t a one-way mirror: if you shatter one half, something breaks on both sides.

There are different ways to cut people open. Nathan Wesninski’s a good butcher.

“You take after your mother, Junior,” Nathan says, “Good at playing the game, but you always place the wrong fucking bets.”

Nathaniel spits at him, half his face an entry wound, the kind that’ll make him flinch for years after when he’s being offered a light by men in bars. Nathan raises his eyebrows and takes three steps forward. Two steps back. Turns on his heel and kicks Andrew in the stomach. He does it three times, then two more. Three steps forward. Two steps back.

“Don’t worry,” Nathan tells his son, whilst Andrew coughs, forehead against the ground. “Whatever I do to him, you won’t remember any of this in the morning,” and Nathaniel makes a kind of dying noise, dying for being half-smothered in his throat. Andrew’s eyes snap to his. Nathaniel doesn’t say _not again,_ but he doesn’t have to: two words that two boys like them know all too well. Lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice but monsters are repetitive.

As though in echo, the dark spots in his vision grow and grow until he thinks he surely must be dying. Only he’s not, only the darkness leeching out across the dirty floorboards, slicking its way towards his father, is billowing out from Andrew on the floor. His shoulders are shaking. There’s a soft noise. After a long moment, Nathaniel realises it’s laughter. Andrew’s _laughing._

 _If you ever see Andrew’s obscurial,_ Aaron had told him, _don’t. Don’t stick around. Run. The last thing my brother needs is to up his body count._

“Close your eyes, Neil,” Andrew says, moments before the obscurial swallows him whole, the rasp of his voice even despite the smoke nearly engulfing them both now.

Remember: obscurials are made from fear, from hate, from what we bleed in the dark. Remember: obscurials are trying to protect something. Remember: obscurials do not forget kindness shown them.

_I would’ve lived for you, Andrew Minyard._

“No,” Neil replies. And he doesn’t, not once, not ever: not ever again.  

*

When Andrew kisses Neil for the first time, it’s like pouring gasoline on himself, Andrew’s teeth in his lip his last match, the brand of his mouth the most potent anchor Andrew could’ve given him. It hooks into his stomach and settles there. Andrew pulls back, his mouth already a frown, Neil’s hands twisted white-knuckled in the sleeves of Andrew’s coat. Neil feels wounded, his breath going fast and shallow, and Andrew leans in to kiss him again, seemingly just to breathe into his mouth and make it stop.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Andrew mutters. “You look drunk.”

“I’m fine,” Neil says, his mouth feeling bruised, “Everything’s jake,” and smiles wide at Andrew’s answering glare.  

“Yeah,” Andrew says, his fingertips measuring out Neil’s pulse with some grim satisfaction, “You’re not going anywhere. Don’t go back on yourself, Neil. I don’t take kindly to broken contracts.”

His chest a great resounding clamour, Neil can only nod.

*

Join up the dots and call it a fucking masterpiece: Baltimore is a shitshow. MACUSA arrive in the suburbs to find two boys, and one of them’s devoured half the house. Of course, they don’t see him as a boy: that’s a great deal of the problem, really. They see an obscurial. They see a monster. They see a half No-Maj who cracked under the weight of his own magic like his spine was a wishbone. In short, they see something that should not, by the grace of the gods, exist. Neil’s always thought their depth perception a bit off, but then they’ve always found him an unreliable narrator at best.

Neil wakes in the basement in the heart of Andrew’s obscurial; suspended, silent and still in the eye of the storm. He can see the faint glimmer of wands through the shadows and the smoke. None of it touches him. Dizzy with blood loss, he hears someone say, “Holy fucking Merlin, there’s someone alive in there,” as though from a great distance. And maybe it is from a great distance: he feels unreal and untethered, and it’s nothing new. But he feels cradled, and that’s new.  

“Andrew,” Neil manages, slow and stupid. He feels the obscurial shift in response. “Andrew, you need to - they’ll kill you if you can’t. Andrew.”

“We need to get in there to him,” someone beyond the obscurial suggests. “Then we can -”

It’s the wrong thing to say. The obscurial - Andrew - flares outwards, savage in response. Neil hears the outcry of broken furniture and outrage as the Aurors are forced backwards. He feels a hot spike of irritation, which lances through him cleaner and sharper than any of Lola’s blades. They’re going to get them all killed if they keep this up, Andrew included. Shivering absently, Neil reaches out towards the obscurial. It retracts away from his touch. Andrew, flinching away on waking. Neil might be suspended, but he’s found some solid ground, and he hits it running.

“Andrew,” he says, “You can stop now. I know you can. You’re more than this.”

He hears a faint noise from within the obscurial, something like the rustling of the wind. He thinks of Andrew’s head thrown back as he drives, fast and reckless, through the cold night air and towards Columbia, towards the minute amount of freedom he’s carved out for himself. For them both. He thinks it sounds a little how that was to watch.

“We have a deal,” Neil reminds him, head swimming, and that’s it, it turns some kind of key, and the next thing he knows he’s on the ground again with Andrew reformed and very much human at his side. Neil’s Patronus is a fox, snapping its jaws, albeit formless and shifting: if Andrew had discovered this under other circumstances, he might’ve laughed. As it is, he settles for a long and eloquent look, whilst Neil bodily puts himself and his wand between the Aurors and Andrew.

“Stay away from us,” he snarls, and in Neil’s shadow, Andrew finally stops shaking.  

Of course, there’s talk of marching Andrew to the chair then and there, but for the others kicking up a fuss like hell yawning open at the Aurors’ heels.

“On principle,” Allison says later, gelling the last of her baby waves in place, her mouth painted miniature and violet. Her eyes catch Neil’s in her compact’s mirror and skip over him. They rest on where Renee stands in the corner talking quietly to Andrew, her hair still long and braided around her head, her lipstick scarlatine like the old blood on her hands. Andrew’s eyes are honeyed in the electric light and though he sounds bored, he stays put.

“Sure,” Neil replies. “You’re sold on nothing but principle.”  

“Shut up, punk.”

Wymack takes the story to The New York Ghost, The Carolina Griffin, every last tabloid he can get; Aaron puts wards up on Katelyn’s house in the night and sits by the door with his wand for fear of Aurors coming to Obliviate her; Dan and Matt offer Neil a bed in their house but he can’t leave Andrew, not now. Andrew sleeps in the chair and Neil doesn’t close his eyes.

MACUSA offer them this: every three months, Andrew must come to their facility to be tested. As long as they inform MACUSA when they cross state borders, they may privately travel within the US of A. One day, they’ll figure out how to separate Andrew from his obscurial and leave Andrew alive.

It sounds good enough at the time, but then they all grow up. There’s a last time for everything. Every three months, Neil says, “We can leave,” to Andrew: an offer, dangling between them, before Andrew turns his head away and says, “We both know you’re tired of running.”

“I’m not tired of you,” Neil argues, and every time Andrew sighs, slow and dragging. It takes years for it to grind Andrew down. After all, Andrew is a man they think is made of stone; it’s years of them learning to talk to each other before Neil says, “We can leave,” and Andrew turns his head towards him, not away, and says “Ask me.”

His heart in his mouth, Neil does.

“Yes,” Andrew tells him.

*

They go to the Blue Ridge mountains with the others, a fortnight in a cabin before heading to New York. MACUSA sign off on it; it’s only a family reunion, and they do this every year. Going to the same place twice is unusual for Andrew Minyard (son of a Second Salemer, son of a No-Maj woman and an unidentified wizard paramour, son of South Carolina with potentially five deaths ascribed to his obscurial) and Neil Josten (formerly Nathaniel Wesninski, with the pureblood, Grindelwald-cult blood frosted in his veins and something cut a little deeper in his liaison with the former) but they went to Blue Ridge in 1921, just after the murder of Nathan Wesninski, hid out there with Wymack’s lot whilst the papers churned out everything short of a protection racket for them. People, like history, sometimes repeat themselves. They’re heading onwards to New York immediately after. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

“Can’t sleep?” Matt says, startling Neil where he sits, chin in hands, watching the late night, early morning skyline. Neil doesn’t reply. His bones feel sharp under his skin. He sits next to Neil silently, warmth and bulk, tilts his head back and glances at Neil out of the corner of his eyes.

“We’ll miss you, Neil,” he says, quietly and, like always, quietly but unerringly going for Neil’s gut. “Come find us when you can.”

“It’s your turn,” Neil replies, feeling viciously pleased with it, feeling the belonging of it soar and sing through him, ricochet off his sharp bones without breaking anything. “You’ll know where we’ll be. Catch us if you can.”

Matt laughs. They sit there until dawn. Andrew comes to find Neil, and he brings Neil’s coat.  

*

The air tastes like salt. With the potion he’d taken before boarding disguising his scars, Neil feels the tug of them anyway when he smiles - hard and brilliant - at the horizon. He watches the Port of Charleston melt away into mist - which is, after all, only rising water - and heads downstairs to his cabin.

He opens the door, and Andrew stands up from his bed.

“It’s just me,” Neil tells him, and watches Andrew’s stance uncoil. He tries to saunter over, but a sudden roll of the ship beneath their feet causes him to stumble right into Neil’s arms. He smells the same, but the new brown of his eyes and hair - the result of his own share of Renee’s potion - takes getting used to. Neil steadies him, careful not to touch the bare skin of Andrew’s wrists, and lets go.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “You were going to fall.”

Andrew nods. Neil relaxes, then tenses on an intake of breath again as Andrew reaches up to his collar, turned up against the wind, turned up like Neil always does to shade the edge of scars from strangers’ eyes, though right now the scars aren’t to be seen. Andrew fixes it, drifts his knuckles over where the worst of the burn stretches, beneath the spell. The nerves there are deadened, but something in Neil flares with the touch anyway.  Like the sea to the moon, he moves in response to Andrew; habit, muscle memory, hard-won familiarity.

“It’s sticking, at least,” Andrew mutters, sounding displeased. He doesn’t like it, having someone who looks almost like a stranger out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t like Neil not looking like Neil any more than Neil does - it makes him feel less real, but it was necessary in order to get them this far. England is waiting on the other side. He lets Andrew ground him. The spell will fade, and they’ll both still be here.  

They met in a place called Eden. They both know what it is to be cast out. This isn’t it.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Some notes about this AU!
> 
> Some canon divergence, obviously: Eden's Twilight is a magical speakeasy, and Neil drops by whilst on the run after his mother's death. He uses a faulty Polyjuice potion and is caught by Andrew, one of the bar staff; the monsters presumably introduce Neil to Wymack and the rest of the Foxes. 
> 
> "Cash or check?" is 1920s slang for "Can I kiss you now or kiss you later?" ("Bank's closed," btw, is slang for "no" or "not right now", depending on context.) "Everything's jake" is slang for "everything's fine," and Neil doesn't change THAT much, lbr. Andrew and Neil are headed to the Hatford estate in England to recoup and plan their next move. Katelyn remains a secret from MACUSA; that, or MACUSA are waiting to use her as leverage one day, but it's more likely the latter. Tilda was part of the Second Salem group, and Andrew still killed her. Andrew drives a Model T Ford. The Moriyamas are here in this world, and they recruit promising young witches and wizards to raise into a private army of purebloods (Ravens, anyone?) This AU got entirely out of control and I figured out who everyone was so hmu if you have questions?? This was so much fun to write & I hope you enjoy it, antilse!


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